2 Timothy 3:16, 17 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I want us to take a look at the book of Ezekiel.  This book can be a confusing book and you may ask the question: how is this book and the events described in it relevant for us today?  I believe that is a very good question.  But I believe there must be something important for us to learn from Ezekiel or God would not have allowed it in the canonization process to be drafted in.  So, what is God wanting us to learn from the Israelites history and how can we apply it to us today.

So, for a moment, allow me to give you a little background for this book.  The book is written over a 20-year period while the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity.  There is a dark tone to the book and God will ask Ezekiel to do some strange things to illustrate how the Israelites have departed from Him and of the judgment to come and the destruction of Jerusalem.  (Share Israel’s history and how God sent the prophets to steer them back.  There was even a time when there were some reforms that came during Josiah’s reign, but the Israelites went right back to their unfaithfulness.  It was during Josiah’s reign when Ezekiel was born.)

Ezekiel was a Levite and destined to be a priest in the temple of the Lord.  He had been training for his work but at the age of 25, he was taken into captivity into Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar.  A Levite would train for his work until the age of 30, then at that age, they would start their priestly duties.  It was five years into the captivity and at the age of thirty that God would begin to give Ezekiel visions and prophetic words for Israel.  You will find that although Ezekiel’s book is over a twenty-year period and 48 chapters long, you will find the span of this history in 2 Kings 24, 25, and in 2 Chronicles 36.

There are few overall themes that I believe we can take from this book.  This morning, as we dive into the book, I would like to take a look at four of them.  They are:

1. Sin is a serious matter and bears consequences

2. God is a loving, kind, and merciful God but there will be a time that God will follow through with his judgment of sin.  So, God uses King Nebuchadnezzar, who doesn’t even know God, to discipline the children of God.  God will not only judge the children of Israel but will also judge the surrounding nations for their actions and treatment of his people.

3. There are threads of hope for all of us in that we all have an opportunity to be treated justly by God.  Even though we may corporately and collectively experience the consequences of sin as a nation because of one’s leaders (we have all felt the ripple of sin in this world even if that sin is not our own).  God will deal with each person in response to how they respond to his will.

4. The Israelites during their captivity were asking, where is God? Through this time of judgment, God would keep sharing threads of hope of how he would restore the nation of Israel; how he would take their heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh; how he would preserve a remnant and how there would be a new temple where a river flowed from it that would bring life to all and healing.  Ezekiel's last words concerning this place would be “The Lord is there.”  God is with you and in you.

5. Over 30 times God states to Ezekiel that “then they will know.”